MUSIC

By the early '70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple-night runs like a legendary Slugs' residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual for him, after which he would be totally spent, emotionally and physically. Graves rarely left anything on the table. Any musical performance was an opportunity to present an amalgamated version of all the things he had learned. He was an innovator and a teacher at his core, and the concert venue was one of his first classroom settings. In March 1976, Verna Gillis invited Graves to perform on WBAI's Free Music Store radio show. For the date, he chose to present a trio lineup which he had been occasionally playing – featuring two saxophonists who were dedicated to the drummer's vision. Hugh Glover is almost exclusively known for his work with Graves, while Arthur Doyle would gain exposure later for an obscure record that he made two years later, Alabama Feeling, which would become a highly collectable item among free jazz enthusiasts. Originally released in 1977, Bäbi remains one of Graves' most seminal recordings. The music played by the trio was ecstatic. Extreme energy music, buoyant and joyful. It relied on Graves' new way of approaching the drum kit, in which he had opened up the bottoms of his skin-slackened toms and eliminated the snare. Graves' art was always unblemished by commercial interests, and this album is its finest mission statement. First-time vinyl reissue. Sourced from the original master tapes.

Few copies available. Exclusive translucent red vinyl. Limited to 500 numbered copies. Includes In Concert At Yale University and Nommo with reproduction of hand-painted sleeve and historical inserts. The late percussionist Milford Graves was one of the most unique artists the world has ever seen. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1941, he began his career in the early '60s as a part of New York's vibrant Latin jazz scene. His focus quickly turned inward, shifting towards a practice that explored the very nature of self. From his work in the New York Art Quartet and collaborations with Albert Ayler, Sonny Sharrock and more to his important contributions during NYC's loft era – he is, simply put, free jazz royalty. In April 1966, the duo of Graves and pianist Don Pullen played at Yale University. As John Corbett writes in the liner notes, "This performance was something of a turning point for Graves. Until then he had been working in other people's bands or collective ensembles. He was phenomenally busy. In 1965 alone, he recorded with NYAQ (two LPs), Giuseppi Logan Quartet, Paul Bley Quintet and Lowell Davidson Trio, and he made his first recording released under his own name, Percussion Ensemble. Every one of these is important in its own way, but none of them quite anticipate how radical was the music that he and Pullen would unleash that evening in New Haven." Originally released on the artists' own Self-Reliance Program label, this legendary one-night performance would be split into two volumes: In Concert At Yale University and Nommo. While rooted in African rhythms, Graves' music has its own sense of time. As the drummer stated in a 1966 DownBeat interview, "Time was always there, and the time I see is not the same as what man says time is. It works by impulsion."

Philosopher, musician and anti-art activist, Henry Flynt has long foregone the academicism often associated with “serious music” in favor of a uniquely intuitive, emotional approach to composition. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a part of NYC’s vibrant avant-garde scene, studying with Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath and developing his own proprietary technique on violin. You Are My Everlovin’, Flynt’s first published musical work, finds the composer in peak form at a lower Manhattan loft in late spring 1981. Featuring solo electric violin and pre-recorded tambura, this sinuous performance elegantly brings together disparate vernaculars—Southern blues, modal jazz, Appalachian fiddle, North Indian raga—into a new and bracing whole. As Flynt writes in the liner notes, “The electric violin timbre is crucial; it allows me to crush the diverse styles into a unity. I imagined the genre as open, radiant improvisation…an open plain that could absorb anything.” Incorporating themes and melodic phrases from his earlier work, Everlovin’ becomes Flynt’s own Gesamtkunstwerk—a work that is at once rooted in and liberated by the drone, revealing the profound mutability and utter singularity of this American iconoclast.

I've just released a collaboration CD album under the name of my Agencement with Masami Akita's Merzbow, which was recorded in autumn 2024.

I hadn't been in contact with him for a very long time, but we were recontacted and considered for a collaborative project for a few years, and we finally did it this time.
We also did the cover artwork for each side.

This is not a digital-only release, so please pick up the CD and listen to it.

Tidal Perspectives is an album by Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett. Recorded across a single afternoon in Brussels, Belgium, the album’s four parts are a rippling alchemy of processed Rhodes piano, sizzling ceramics, and liquified bass flute, a rare meeting of three unique voices from the contemporary music landscape that manages to flow with the effortless inevitability of the oceanic tides. Giovanni Di Domenico, an accomplished composer and prolific collaborator who has released albums with Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, among many others, initiated the collaboration with Bennett after the two met at a record fair in Saint-Gilles, Belgium and bonded over a shared inquisitiveness for unconventional sonic combinations. Along with Pak Yan Lau, a Belgian-born sound artist and improviser who has developed her own rich and unique sonic footprint, the trio entered the studio with little, if any, discussion beforehand, jumping right into playing without preconceived structures. The resulting recordings had a depth of sound and emotional resonance surprising even them, with finished pieces emerging from single live takes and minor edits. Bennett, known for his solo work as well as his collaborations with Christina Vantzou as CV & JAB, gives us here a taste of his bass flute in free flowing form. Unconstricted by concept, joyfully and lazily bouncing off the melodic shimmers of Di Domenico’s Rhodes, Bennett uses his flute’s pitch information to trigger long tones that emerge like rays of light piercing through low hanging clouds - moments of clarity among a clicking world of sonic stimuli. Meanwhile, Lau’s crackling and sometimes dissonant contributions on prepared piano, live hydrophone, and custom ceramic sound objects balance out the triangle, adding a sense of microcosmic intrigue that allows the music to seamlessly ebb and flow between moments of comfort and foggy uncertainty. The album’s title track and climax, the eighteen minute “Tidal Perspectives”, drifts in with some kind of clarity, Lau’s glinting tonal waves edging in just beyond the horizon lines drawn by Di Domenico’s Rhodes and Bennett’s bass flute. But like the tidal flows of the Atlantic that inspired its title, just as you begin to perceive what’s happening, the currents have already taken you out to sea.

Derek Bailey’s incredible debut solo showcase is given a necessary, expanded reissue as part of Honest Jon’s reissue series of important releases on Bailey and Evan Parker’s Incus Records. The original LP of finger-flaying improvisations and Bailey’s takes on works by Gavin Bryars and Misha Mengelberg is now augmented by an extra disc of farther improvs, including a solo show at York University in 1972. The late, great guitar pioneer’s Solo Guitar remains pivotal testament to his endeavours in dismantling modern instrumental music and freeing it to more curious routes of expression, much in key - so to speak - with the US free jazz and improvised music which it evolved from. Love it or not, this record remains a totem of late 20th centre musical exploration. “Recorded in 1971, Solo Guitar Volume 1 was Bailey’s first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return. The LP was issued in two versions over the years — Incus 2 and 2R — with different groupings of free improvisations paired with Bailey’s performances of notated pieces by his friends Misha Mengelberg, Gavin Bryars and Willem Breuker. All this music is here, plus a superb solo performance at York University in 1972; a welcome shock at the end of an evening of notated music. It’s a striking demonstration of the way Bailey rewrote the language of the guitar with endless inventiveness, intelligence and wit.”

The Handover

There is, and has been, a prevailing orthodoxy permeating the Egyptian musical hierarchy that would render this spectacular piece as scandalous. But let us remember that over the past 100 years, Said Darwish, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Halim El Dabh, Ahmad Adaweya, and the modern Mahraganat movement have all experienced their fair share of scandal and opposition. Music must always be pushed forward – it may not always succeed as revelatory, but in this particular case, it does. Much like the venerable magic carpet, the Handover slowly builds to escort you into its swirling, ascending expression of the psychedelic, eventually descending, step by step, back to earth, landing as a wondrous spaceship with wide open doors inviting us inside for repeat listening. Perhaps this should have been happening in Egyptian music 50 years ago but it's here right now, and that's what matters. We are often asked an impossible question to answer: "What constitutes a Sublime Frequencies release?" For the moment, we can point to this record as the answer to that question.
- Alan Bishop/Sublime Frequencies (March 2024)
¬
In The Handover, Aly Eissa, Ayman Asfour and Jonas Cambien explore the common and uncommon senses of Egypt's ritual music. It is clear that Aly Eissa's original composition is deeply rooted in Egyptian and Arabic traditions. At the same time, this band is one of the most progressive coming out of Egypt today. This is in big part thanks to Eissa, who has proven time and again to be not only an extremely skillful composer, but also a real visionary, combining tradition with modern experimentation.

A performance by The Handover is typically one stretch without break: a long build-up that lasts for the duration of the concert. Towards the end of the performance, all the tension is released in an exuberant, joyful climax, when wild improvisations are driven forward on top of exciting dance-rhythms from rural Egypt. The Handover elegantly combines the delicacy of classical Arabic music, the raw expressiveness of Egypt's countryside music, and the spontaneity of free improvisation, carefully obliterating the artificial separation between acoustic and electronic instruments. Despite the remarkable absence of any percussion or drums, The Handover is an extremely groovy band, with an ability to slow down and accelerate the tempo in almost telepathic synchronization at exactly the right moments.

Alongside the tight ensemble playing there is plenty of room for individual expression as the oud, synthesizer and violin take turns playing solos on top of repetitive riffs. Throughout the album, native Alexandrian Ayman Asfour plays the violin with breathtaking beauty, while not being afraid to make the violin buzz, squeak and rattle at times. Belgian/Norwegian keyboardist Jonas Cambien makes the synthesizer a melodic instrument in its own right, at times evoking almost classical Maqam, while in other moments it seems like he comes straight out of an Egyptian wedding. The oud forms the backbone in the composition's structure, as Aly Eissa's solos guide the listener from minimalist, meditative drones, to a compelling climax, and back to earth.

There is much more to The Handover's sound then the obvious references to Arabic and Egyptian music. The opening drone section of the album is pushed towards abstraction and even noise, and the vintage Farfisa organ gives the music a touch of 70s psychedelic rock. The repetitive riffs can be reminiscent of Embryo's experiments combining krautrock with influences from the middle-east, but the use of repetition to induce trance dates way back in Egyptian music, and is present in many rituals like Sufi and moulid celebrations. The composed melodies on this album couldn't be possible without Eissa's deep love for this music. And what The Handover does with this composed material couldn't be possible without three strong individual voices, their love to play music together and their dedication to push the traditions forward.

(Recorded in Alexandria Egypt in January of 2023, this Limited-Edition vinyl LP includes a two-sided insert with additional photos, liner notes and bios of the musicians)

Tracklist:

Side A

1. The Handover (Part 1)

Side B

1. The Handover (Part 2)

Highlights:

1. The Handover is a trio consisting of: Aly Eissa, Ayman Asfour and Jonas Cambien
2. Influences of Arabic Classical, rural Egyptian music, psychedelic, Krautrock and free improvisation
3. Perhaps this should have been happening in Egyptian music 50 years ago.
4. Limited-Edition vinyl LP includes a two-sided insert with additional photos, liner notes and bios of the musicians. 

John Duncan's "SAXMIX" is one massive piece of contemporary experimental music, which lets noise collide with free jazz and extreme minimalism. Duncan is a master when it comes to these things, and he is an artists constantly evolving, mutating and challenging. The sax thing then? JD has invited some of his fav sax players to collaborate with him; Mats Gustafsson, Antoine Chessex, Martin Escalante, Dror Feiler and Ulrich Krieger. Did I say MASSIVE? Well, it is.

Scheintot is a new debuting trio consisting of Mats Gustafsson (sax/flute), Henrik Rylander (mixing desk) and myself on Korg MS20 which might be my fav synth ever, or right now at least. This is weird stuff. Not sure where this is going but I guess you will enjoy it if you are into stuff we have done before, but this sits comfortably in its own corner, and we are not smart enough to be ashamed over sounding so infected.

Nice cover by Tochnit Aleph boss Daniel Löwenbrück.

Hot stuff, basically!

Nina Garcia has been actively moving the art of noise guitar into surprising and intriguing new spaces. She has been at it for some time now, a bit of a secret weapon all the while hiding in plain sight. As I listen to her music and ruminate upon seeing her perform it brings me to a realization which I have with very few musicians: the ego inherent in making art  can be transcended through a purity of direct action. At least that’s the feeling I have when experiencing Nina’s music which comes across as serious and radical and wholly engaged in the moment of its creative impulse. With Bye Bye Bird she delivers her most exalted and sublime collection of recordings for all adventurous hearts to hear. A fantastic album.

Thurston Moore, London 2024 </p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2191920208/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://ideologicorgan.bandcamp.com/album/bye-bye-bird">Bye Bye Bird by Nina Garcia</a></iframe>

Tara Clerkin Trio present their self titled debut LP on Laura Lies In. Similar to that directorial effect of filming at double speed and then slowing down for playback, the record ambles with assurance, expertly paced.

Opening with a jovial cacophony before the beatific ‘in the room’ confidently relieves, washing away any unease with an innately alien familiarity.

Coming to with the padded percussive patterns of 'Helenica', taking a moment to remember where you are in this temporal smudge. The serene contemplation of 'Any of these' signals we're homeward with a dependable afterglow, a friend you don’t need to thank for a good weekend.

A record existing disconnected from the daily getyadowns, a holiday from life, optimism as resistance against mundanity, something extraordinary amongst the ordinary, positively grey.

Recorded and produced by Dominic Mitchison. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux.

Absolute K.O. bout of free jazz poetry by a spry, 85 year old Joe McPhee, adapting his renowned improvised practice to words - juxtaposed with Mats Gustafson’s sparing brass and electric gestures. It’s an utterly timeless and transfixing salvo, another shiny notch for Smalltown Supersound’s brilliant Le Jazz Non Series.
*300 copies limited edition* As a common ligature to the OG free jazz scene of ‘60s NYC, with formative binds to its European offshoots and the experimental avant garde, Joe McPhee is a true force of nature who has represented jazz at its freest over a remarkable lifetime. In duo with Swedish free jazz and noise standard bearer Mats Gustafson, he upends expectations with an astonishingly vivid and upfront example of his enduring contribution to freely improvised music. In 11 parts he variously reflects on everything from the neon sleaze and scuzz of NYC to contemporary US politicians and laugh out loud imitations of his previous sparring partners such as Peter Brötzmann, with a head-slapping immediacy that leaves you reeling, spellbound. 

McPhee’s flow of rare, organic cadence, ranging from urgent to contemplative and dreamlike, is blessed with a unique turn-of-phrase that surely mirrors his decades of instrumental work. Gustafsson, meanwhile, dextrously takes up the mantle with a multi-instrumental spectrum of sounds, leaving McPhee unbound and able to float and sting on the mic. There’s obvious wisdom in his perceptively penetrative observations, as derived from a rich cultural life well spent, but also a playful naivety and levity in his ability to veer from almost melodic speech to explosive aggression and a knowing, bathetic wit. It’s perhaps hard to believe that McPhee only started incorporating and performing spoken word in his work in the past ten years, a half century since his declaration of “What Time Is It‽” announced his arrival on a legendary debut ‘Nation Time’ (1971), ushering in one of free jazz’s most singular characters in the process. 

These are recordings from the Berlin club Au Topsi Pohl where [ism] played 4-nights in a row, May 18-21 2022. For the concerts a Bösendorfer grand piano was brought in to the small club - the trio barely fit on stage, but the acoustic sound, all the more omnipresent and precise, was embraced by a highly crafted and risky playing evoking notions of dreams, form and human vibrations. 
Maua means flowers in Swahili. 

Kind Regards is the second duo release from guitarist Oren Ambarchi and drummer Eric Thielemans, out via AD 93 on the 21st February 2025.

The record captures an expansive performance in Poitiers, France in November 2023. First working together in an unpredictable trio with minimalist legend and eccentric extraordinaire Charlemagne Palestine, Ambarchi and Thielemans quickly established a remarkable musical chemistry that led to an ongoing series of duo concerts, including the performance documented on their LP Double Consciousness (Matière Mémorie, 2023).

Kind Regards finds the duo refining their shared language while continuing to take risks, allowing the music’s gravitational pull to lead them from meditative calm to unexpectedly expressive passages of melodic invention and rhythmic drive. Recorded in sparkling fidelity and carefully mixed by Ambarchi’s longtime collaborator Joe Talia, the LP contains a single unbroken performance, stretching out for over 45 minutes. Guitar and drums weave together into a symbiotic whole that nevertheless affords us ample opportunity to marvel at the highly personal approaches these two musicians have developed to their chosen instruments through decades of diverse collaboration and prolific performance.

The set begins with Thielemans’ hypnotic tom patterns, around which Ambarchi’s wavering, shimmering guitar tones—achieved with the help of the rotating speaker of a Leslie cabinet—flurry and swirl. Thielemans’ drums play subtle tricks with time and perception, adding and dropping beats within repeated patterns to create an effect at once rhythmically insistent and liquified. Growing at first into a rapidly pulsing texture of brushed drums and flickering harmonics, the music builds momentum into an irregular groove over which Ambarchi’s guitar is transformed into haunting, monumental electric organ chords, strikingly recalling the Wurlitzer work of Alice Coltrane, before settling into a section of gentle portamento melody embedded into the tactile clicks and clangs of Thielemans’ percussion.
When Thielemans adopts a more traditional jazz approach to the kit in some of the set’s second half, the results are stunning, demonstrating a feel for shifting accents and sensibility to the touch of the stick on the drum or cymbal that recalls greats like Jack De Johnette or Billy Hart (one of Thielemans’ mentors). And when Ambarchi turns up the heat, he does so in an unexpected and delightful way, letting loose a swarm of jittering delayed tones straight out of Henry Kaiser’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life, with a more active use of the guitar’s fretboard than his usual approach to the instrument allows. As the performance draws to a close after a climactic episode of distorted harmonic groans and crashing cymbals that manages to be at once thunderous and carefully attuned to detail, it is clearer than ever that, for these two serial collaborators, this is a very special pairing.

Kind Regards shows us the kind of magic that can happen when two masters who have dedicated decades to reimagining their instruments simply begin to play, following the music wherever it goes. 

Alabaster DePlume often asks a simple question: what do people need? In his work, at his shows, in his collaborations, the Mancunian singer-saxophonist and poet-philosopher poses this to the people around him. What are people looking for? In recent years, the same reply kept coming up: healing, healing, people need healing. But why, and what does it mean to heal, especially in a world where the very idea is often commodified and sold as a luxury? If people were coming to his music for something so mysterious, he ought to figure it out. Maybe he ought to try some healing himself.

“For a long time, I've always tried to give responsibility for my value to someone else,” DePlume told me on a recent phone call. It seemed he’d become so caught up in the work of forging connections, and thinking about the effects of his work on others, that he’d lost a sense of himself. “I was working on that,” he explained.

This experiment in healing included slowing down, reading, reflecting, and even taking up the practice of jiu-jitsu. DePlume wrote poetry, too, including the book 'Looking for my value: prologue to a blade', seventy pages of verse rooted in its title’s great search, in finding strength of self within a community, alongside meditations on the paradox of the blade. “The blade, that divides, is whole,” he writes in the introduction. “Healing is the forming of a whole, and a whole is singular, more itself, as in more one, as in more alone.” A blade could be used to attack, to shave, to sever, but it could also be used to cut oneself loose—in the process of getting free.

“What's the opposite of sleep? It’s trying to sleep,” he told me. “And so what's the opposite of looking for my value? It is knowing my value. It simply is there. My dignity is there. I don't need anyone else to know my dignity, or me, to know it. I know it first. I can't seek it from another. I stand for it.”

Selections from the poetry book ultimately became the lyrics across half of the tracks on 'A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole', DePlume’s latest full-length work for the reliably great International Anthem label: eleven songs of agency and survival and presence; of confronting life’s pains rather than trying to avoid them; of banishing escapism. In sum, it documents his learning of the fact that dignity and self-determination are prerequisites for becoming whole, which is to say, for healing. If a blade were broken it would not serve its purpose; it must be unbroken, it must be whole, to be of use.

In the Alabaster DePlume songbook, the celestial ease of his instrumental tracks can sometimes feel like a trojan horse for a voice that is disarmingly honest about the heaviness of existence. Opener “Oh My Actual Days” is true to form in that sense, with DePlume’s tenor sax and Macie Stewart’s ghostly strings playing together like a slow march towards an inner reckoning, one that’s beautiful because it is true. The punchy and contemplative “Thank You My Pain” makes a rhythmic refrain from his titular lyric, inspired by the Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh, who urged the importance of listening to one’s own pain. “Hello my little pain, I know you are here,” Nhất Hạnh would say. “I am home to take care of you. I do not want to cover you up with consumption anymore.” While writing A Blade, DePlume “watched loads of him on YouTube.”

Then there’s the gorgeous swell of “Invincibility,” an ode to self-respect that feels a bit like a choir of angels led by a trickster, a group contemplating: how do we live with the forces that seek to destroy us? The whole song feels like a heavy exhale, or like the feeling of reaching the surface after a long while underwater. “If I meet with my feelings, they cannot destroy me,” he told me. “When I allow myself to embody them, physically, then I live through that feeling and I meet with it and I make peace with it and I find that my feeling is me, and I welcome it. It is a sense that I cannot be destroyed by my feeling. I am invincible.”

“Form a V” is the closest DePlume comes to a monologue, and also his song most indebted to his jiu-jitsu practice. “I’ve only been doing it for the past two or three years,” he told me. “But now I don’t know how you get by without it.” The song takes inspiration from a tradition where a whole dojo will stand in the shape of a V, facing just one lone individual, who is then attacked quickly and repeatedly by each of the others. “The title is a challenge to the world,” DePlume explained. “Go on, form a v—I am ready.”

Across the first half of the record, when the sax comes in short phrases, it feels like a highlighter over lines in DePlume’s poetry book. Other times, it plays out like an extension of his voice. “Playing the saxophone feels like singing,” he said. A transfixing run of instrumentals on the second half of the record includes “Prayer for My Sovereign Dignity,” an anthem for self-possession. “Believing in yourself feels ridiculous,” he says. “It's ridiculous, but that's what it takes. That's what's required. To stand for yourself is absurd. Let us do the absurd that is standing for ourselves. There is this prayer going on in the background—you can't quite tell what the words are, but it's basically, I'm praying for my sovereign dignity but I don't need to pray for it. It's not going to be given to me. I already have it.”

Where DePlume’s previous material was drawn from collective sessions, improvisation, and editing, A Blade was tightly composed, arranged and produced by DePlume himself. From there, he brought his compositions to a cast of players and co-arrangers, including Macie Stewart (strings), Donna Thompson (backing vocals), and Momoko Gill (strings and backing vocals), for sessions at the collective arts space Total Refreshment Centre, where he has long been involved.

Born Gus Fairbairn, DePlume is a man of many past lives. He played “rock band type music” as a teenager, and started playing improvised music around 2008. He is compelled by how improvising allows him to “put faith in others.” He taught himself the saxophone around the time that he became employed as a support worker assisting men with mental disabilities; he once called playing music with them “one of the best breakthroughs for me as an artist.” His debut as Alabaster DePlume came in May 2012, while he was still living in Manchester. He moved to London in 2015 and took up residency at Total Refreshment Centre, where he was encouraged to put on a monthly concert, leading to the series Peach, releasing a namesake album that year, too. His music, from the start, has been imbued with his politics and values; he was maybe arrested once during a protest with the environmental group Extinction Rebellion. His proper international breakthrough came in 2020 with 'To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1', after nearly a decade of steadily releasing records.

On a phone call in the fall of 2024, we barely speak about any of this though. For at least an hour, we mostly just speak about his recent trip to Palestine, and how could we not? DePlume had traveled to Bethlehem in the spring for a conference hosted by a local Lutheran pastor, before meeting up with musicians from a community arts space, the Wonder Cabinet, and the independent radio station, Radio Alhara. “Palestine is a place where people make records,” he says. “I want to normalize the dignity of that. It's not like, oh, I'm going to make a thing about Palestine. I am just there, and I'm making a thing.”

At the end of 2024, DePlume prefaced A Blade with a collection of recent works: the poetry book and a three-track EP partially recorded in Bethlehem, and in collaboration with Palestinian musicians. There’s “Honeycomb” and “Cremisan,” both recorded during his “Sounds of Places” residency at Wonder Cabinet; “Cremisan” documents the conclusion of a daylong performance presented by Wonder Cabinet and Radio alHara, June 1, 2024, described as “a cry from the Cremisan Valley (Bethlehem, Palestine) to Rafah (Gaza).” The EP’s final recording, “Gifts of Olive,” references the soul-wrenching poem “If I Must Die” by Refaat Alareer, professor of English literature at the Islamic University in Gaza, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2023.

To suggest that dignity is a human right we are all entitled to is to say: by nature of being alive, every human life has worth. Contemplating the very concept of human dignity also raises the daily indignities that are so normalized in a world of suffering. The lack of access to clean water, air, housing, healthcare. Without the basic necessities of life, we cannot know dignity. And how can people know dignity if they are living under a constant state of military attack, if they are living as the target of a genocide?

“The album was written before the genocide started, but I had Palestine on my mind all the time,” DePlume explains. “This question of dignity, sovereignty, and the work of healing. It has a relevance in what's being perpetrated there by the Israeli state, and taking responsibility for my place in that. I pay my taxes here in the United Kingdom—I am contributing to, as a white Englishman, the country that brought the Balfour Declaration, that brought the Sykes-Picot Agreement, that supports and enables the colonization and the settler-colonial project in Palestine. It is my issue, and I have a position where I can speak about it.”

“Dignity” has roots in the Latin dignitatem: worthiness. And instilling the plain truth of every human life’s worth has been a recurring commitment in DePlume’s work. “They can’t use us on one another if we don’t forget we’re precious,” he sang in 2022, summing the emotional core of his 2022 album 'GOLD', concerns of shared humanity that play out into the new works as well.

“We make stories in our lives,” DePlume says. “Oh, I need my story. Oh, something bad happened, and I need to heal upon that. Then I will be healed and all will be good, happily ever after. But no, it is work that needs doing all the time. We all are wounded in our many different ways. And there are degrees of healed, or wounded. Basically, we are either doing one thing or we're doing the other. How do I know I am not destroying myself? I only know that when I am working on healing.” 

Alabaster DePlume often asks a simple question: what do people need? In his work, at his shows, in his collaborations, the Mancunian singer-saxophonist and poet-philosopher poses this to the people around him. What are people looking for? In recent years, the same reply kept coming up: healing, healing, people need healing. But why, and what does it mean to heal, especially in a world where the very idea is often commodified and sold as a luxury? If people were coming to his music for something so mysterious, he ought to figure it out. Maybe he ought to try some healing himself.

“For a long time, I've always tried to give responsibility for my value to someone else,” DePlume told me on a recent phone call. It seemed he’d become so caught up in the work of forging connections, and thinking about the effects of his work on others, that he’d lost a sense of himself. “I was working on that,” he explained.

This experiment in healing included slowing down, reading, reflecting, and even taking up the practice of jiu-jitsu. DePlume wrote poetry, too, including the book 'Looking for my value: prologue to a blade', seventy pages of verse rooted in its title’s great search, in finding strength of self within a community, alongside meditations on the paradox of the blade. “The blade, that divides, is whole,” he writes in the introduction. “Healing is the forming of a whole, and a whole is singular, more itself, as in more one, as in more alone.” A blade could be used to attack, to shave, to sever, but it could also be used to cut oneself loose—in the process of getting free.

“What's the opposite of sleep? It’s trying to sleep,” he told me. “And so what's the opposite of looking for my value? It is knowing my value. It simply is there. My dignity is there. I don't need anyone else to know my dignity, or me, to know it. I know it first. I can't seek it from another. I stand for it.”

Selections from the poetry book ultimately became the lyrics across half of the tracks on 'A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole', DePlume’s latest full-length work for the reliably great International Anthem label: eleven songs of agency and survival and presence; of confronting life’s pains rather than trying to avoid them; of banishing escapism. In sum, it documents his learning of the fact that dignity and self-determination are prerequisites for becoming whole, which is to say, for healing. If a blade were broken it would not serve its purpose; it must be unbroken, it must be whole, to be of use.

In the Alabaster DePlume songbook, the celestial ease of his instrumental tracks can sometimes feel like a trojan horse for a voice that is disarmingly honest about the heaviness of existence. Opener “Oh My Actual Days” is true to form in that sense, with DePlume’s tenor sax and Macie Stewart’s ghostly strings playing together like a slow march towards an inner reckoning, one that’s beautiful because it is true. The punchy and contemplative “Thank You My Pain” makes a rhythmic refrain from his titular lyric, inspired by the Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh, who urged the importance of listening to one’s own pain. “Hello my little pain, I know you are here,” Nhất Hạnh would say. “I am home to take care of you. I do not want to cover you up with consumption anymore.” While writing A Blade, DePlume “watched loads of him on YouTube.”

Then there’s the gorgeous swell of “Invincibility,” an ode to self-respect that feels a bit like a choir of angels led by a trickster, a group contemplating: how do we live with the forces that seek to destroy us? The whole song feels like a heavy exhale, or like the feeling of reaching the surface after a long while underwater. “If I meet with my feelings, they cannot destroy me,” he told me. “When I allow myself to embody them, physically, then I live through that feeling and I meet with it and I make peace with it and I find that my feeling is me, and I welcome it. It is a sense that I cannot be destroyed by my feeling. I am invincible.”

“Form a V” is the closest DePlume comes to a monologue, and also his song most indebted to his jiu-jitsu practice. “I’ve only been doing it for the past two or three years,” he told me. “But now I don’t know how you get by without it.” The song takes inspiration from a tradition where a whole dojo will stand in the shape of a V, facing just one lone individual, who is then attacked quickly and repeatedly by each of the others. “The title is a challenge to the world,” DePlume explained. “Go on, form a v—I am ready.”

Across the first half of the record, when the sax comes in short phrases, it feels like a highlighter over lines in DePlume’s poetry book. Other times, it plays out like an extension of his voice. “Playing the saxophone feels like singing,” he said. A transfixing run of instrumentals on the second half of the record includes “Prayer for My Sovereign Dignity,” an anthem for self-possession. “Believing in yourself feels ridiculous,” he says. “It's ridiculous, but that's what it takes. That's what's required. To stand for yourself is absurd. Let us do the absurd that is standing for ourselves. There is this prayer going on in the background—you can't quite tell what the words are, but it's basically, I'm praying for my sovereign dignity but I don't need to pray for it. It's not going to be given to me. I already have it.”

Where DePlume’s previous material was drawn from collective sessions, improvisation, and editing, A Blade was tightly composed, arranged and produced by DePlume himself. From there, he brought his compositions to a cast of players and co-arrangers, including Macie Stewart (strings), Donna Thompson (backing vocals), and Momoko Gill (strings and backing vocals), for sessions at the collective arts space Total Refreshment Centre, where he has long been involved.

Born Gus Fairbairn, DePlume is a man of many past lives. He played “rock band type music” as a teenager, and started playing improvised music around 2008. He is compelled by how improvising allows him to “put faith in others.” He taught himself the saxophone around the time that he became employed as a support worker assisting men with mental disabilities; he once called playing music with them “one of the best breakthroughs for me as an artist.” His debut as Alabaster DePlume came in May 2012, while he was still living in Manchester. He moved to London in 2015 and took up residency at Total Refreshment Centre, where he was encouraged to put on a monthly concert, leading to the series Peach, releasing a namesake album that year, too. His music, from the start, has been imbued with his politics and values; he was maybe arrested once during a protest with the environmental group Extinction Rebellion. His proper international breakthrough came in 2020 with 'To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1', after nearly a decade of steadily releasing records.

On a phone call in the fall of 2024, we barely speak about any of this though. For at least an hour, we mostly just speak about his recent trip to Palestine, and how could we not? DePlume had traveled to Bethlehem in the spring for a conference hosted by a local Lutheran pastor, before meeting up with musicians from a community arts space, the Wonder Cabinet, and the independent radio station, Radio Alhara. “Palestine is a place where people make records,” he says. “I want to normalize the dignity of that. It's not like, oh, I'm going to make a thing about Palestine. I am just there, and I'm making a thing.”

At the end of 2024, DePlume prefaced A Blade with a collection of recent works: the poetry book and a three-track EP partially recorded in Bethlehem, and in collaboration with Palestinian musicians. There’s “Honeycomb” and “Cremisan,” both recorded during his “Sounds of Places” residency at Wonder Cabinet; “Cremisan” documents the conclusion of a daylong performance presented by Wonder Cabinet and Radio alHara, June 1, 2024, described as “a cry from the Cremisan Valley (Bethlehem, Palestine) to Rafah (Gaza).” The EP’s final recording, “Gifts of Olive,” references the soul-wrenching poem “If I Must Die” by Refaat Alareer, professor of English literature at the Islamic University in Gaza, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2023.

To suggest that dignity is a human right we are all entitled to is to say: by nature of being alive, every human life has worth. Contemplating the very concept of human dignity also raises the daily indignities that are so normalized in a world of suffering. The lack of access to clean water, air, housing, healthcare. Without the basic necessities of life, we cannot know dignity. And how can people know dignity if they are living under a constant state of military attack, if they are living as the target of a genocide?

“The album was written before the genocide started, but I had Palestine on my mind all the time,” DePlume explains. “This question of dignity, sovereignty, and the work of healing. It has a relevance in what's being perpetrated there by the Israeli state, and taking responsibility for my place in that. I pay my taxes here in the United Kingdom—I am contributing to, as a white Englishman, the country that brought the Balfour Declaration, that brought the Sykes-Picot Agreement, that supports and enables the colonization and the settler-colonial project in Palestine. It is my issue, and I have a position where I can speak about it.”

“Dignity” has roots in the Latin dignitatem: worthiness. And instilling the plain truth of every human life’s worth has been a recurring commitment in DePlume’s work. “They can’t use us on one another if we don’t forget we’re precious,” he sang in 2022, summing the emotional core of his 2022 album 'GOLD', concerns of shared humanity that play out into the new works as well.

“We make stories in our lives,” DePlume says. “Oh, I need my story. Oh, something bad happened, and I need to heal upon that. Then I will be healed and all will be good, happily ever after. But no, it is work that needs doing all the time. We all are wounded in our many different ways. And there are degrees of healed, or wounded. Basically, we are either doing one thing or we're doing the other. How do I know I am not destroying myself? I only know that when I am working on healing.” 

He is known for his collaborations with big names such as Ry Cooder, Vampire Weekend and Moses Sumney, and as the leader of the jazz trio "Inga", Sam Gendel is a very popular fourth-world inspired saxophonist from LA who has created a unique and free sound that can be described as psychedelic, outsider or meditative. His latest album "Fresh Bread" from Leaving, which is arguably the most important album of the year, is now in stock. It's an all-genre anthology of 52 tracks selected from his personal archive of home recordings and performances from 2012 to 2020. Carlos Niño, Jamire Williams and others also participate.

The improvisational session by trumpet, shamisen, tabla, and electronics creates light and shade. Through J.A.K.A.M.'s reconstruction, it becomes a wellspring of time and space, reflecting soundscapes reminiscent of a Japanese garden. - Chee Shimizu

Riding the rails down to the past and back to the future, Eiko considers the unknown lives that her own family has lived, set to expansive pop travelogues evoking the work of pioneers like Joni and Scott Walker, while pushing further, always further....

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** This album is a historical document in several respects: echo of a creative season in its early, vigorous blossoming, it presents groundbreaking music as it was performed and listened to in a moment that now seems very distant, not just chronologically but also in terms of its cultural context. Furthermore, it serves as a testament to the initial opening of the emerging Italian free music scene to Northern European experiences, which had already been in communication for years.
The collaboration between Evan Parker and Andrea Centazzo had begun a few months before this concert held in Padova on December 12, 1977. In July, Parker came to Italy, specifically to Tuscany, for a series of concerts, including a duo performance with Derek Bailey in Pisa. Then he joined Centazzo, who had organized a seminar with him (likely the first of its kind in Italy) in San Marcello Pistoiese. At that time, Centazzo lived and worked in the countryside between Pistoia and Montecatini. On that occasion, Centazzo recalls recording studio material, which, along with material collected during the concert in San Marcello, became the album Duets 71977 (CD Ictus 178). Shortly after, the duo temporarily expanded into a trio with Alvin Curran, who recorded Real Time (CD Ictus 124). By then, the Centro d'Arte had existed for more than thirty years as an association connected to the University, presenting seasons with a very open and research–oriented profile. These seasons featured classical chamber music alongside occasional but significant episodes of contemporary music, jazz, and even ethnic music.

 However, it was only since 1973 that the Centro d'Arte had started an autonomous jazz series, favoring contemporary and avant–garde artists such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sam Rivers, Anthony Braxton, and musicians from the emerging European free jazz scene. The concerts were held in a temporary structure, a circus tent located in the area of the old slaughterhouse. The audience was quite large, ranging from 500 to over 1000 people, which may be surprising for an avant–garde jazz series, considering the size of the city, with no more than 250,000 inhabitants. At that time, Italy, and Padova in particular, was going through a particularly turbulent political period. The ideas of radical democracy that circulated among the youth masses often meant that participation in a collective event, such as a concert, was not to be simply passive. In addition, a recent series of incidents and clashes had resulted in a near–total ban on rock concerts across the country; consequently, much of the young audience had turned to whatever appeared contemporary and alternative to the commercial scene, such as the new jazz. Anything that seemed radical was generally well–received, even better if it was entertaining.

But perhaps this wasn't the case. The Centazzo/Parker duo was indeed one of the most experimental episodes presented by the Centro d'Arte in those years. Parker had already developed his characteristic style, and as John Zorn observed in his introduction to Duets 71977, "during this intermediate phase between what was documented in Saxophone Solos (1975) and Monoceros (1978), Parker was still using plastic reeds that defined the sharp articulations of his early sound and was beginning to refine the circular breathing that would become a major focus of exploration in the years to come". Meanwhile, as is apparent in the cover photos, Centazzo was already working with a custom–built expanded drum kit made by the English Premier company, with cymbals and gongs that he had designed and produced in collaboration with UFIP in Pistoia. In addition to percussion, Centazzo used one of the first percussion synthesizers, the Synare, and a range of electronic sound objects, including the 'crackle box,' designed and produced in small quantities by Michel Waisvisz (a specimen that had been given to him by Steve Lacy), and also lo–fi sound toys, such as the 'laughing bag.' To many ears at the time, all of this was more astonishing than appreciated for the quality of a new and unheard–of musical practice. Some of the audience expressed their confusion, but those who made a fuss didn't seem to disapprove as much as they aimed for a 'creative' involvement with the scene, in an effort perhaps to raise the level of their intermittent interest. Under the tent, people drank, some smoked, not everyone was seated, and even a few dogs wandered around. Something of this atmosphere, so far removed from today's norms, can be heard in the residual bustling soundscape of voices in the background of the music. However, it takes an additional effort of imagination to realize the intense tension that immediately arose between the performers and the audience, ultimately determining the high 'temperature' of the improvised event. One could recall that only ten days before, in Milan, John Cage had heroically faced for almost three hours an extremely tumultuous crowd of 2,000 people challenging him to complete his solo performance of Empty Words, often reaching the brink of physical threat. The musical material heard on this album does not correspond to the entire concert but is a selection that emphasizes some particularly intense long sequences. It is worth remembering that about twenty minutes into the actual concert, some voices from the audience began to howl and even mock what they were listening to. Parker expressed his irritation through the music, but also with words in which he ironically described himself as a gladiator in the arena. In this portion of the concert, which is not included in the album, spoiled as it is by annoying distortions, you can hear him addressing the audience: "Bring back bullfighting, Bring back bullfighting... whoa... Bullfighting on ice!" and later shouting, "Bring on the lions!" Thus, the title of the album also seeks to evoke these significant aspects of the way free music was made and listened to in many situations that occurred in those epic 1970s. – Veniero Rizzardi (October 2023)

Technical Note: The recording originates from the Centro d'Arte archive. Although there is no precise information available about the source, it is highly probable that the performance was recorded by capturing a mono signal from the mixing board and routing it to two tracks on a reel–to–reel Revox A77 at 7.5 ips. The recording engineer is unknown. In 2000, Stefano Bassanese converted the tape into a digital file (44100 Hz/16 bit) in his home studio. This forms the basis of the current restoration process, conducted at Outside Inside Studio by Matt Bordin, who is also responsible for editing and mastering.

personnel: Andrea Centazzo percussion and electronics / Evan Parker soprano and tenor saxophones - Recorded live in concert december 12, 1977 at Teatro Tenda, Padova, Italy. produced by Centro d'Arte dell'Università di Padova. All tracks are free improvisations by the duo. Restoration, editing and mastering by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio. Liner notes by Veniero Rizzardi. Photos by Michele Giotto.

 ** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli. "It was a magic evening. Not only did the trio burst with a creative energy that was homogeneous and interactive, but the acoustics, usually inadequate, of the half-empty sports pavilion with a capacity of 10,000 people, gave the music an ethereal transparency and crystalline purity that the recording captured and the CD newly presents in all its singular beauty."(Andrea Centazzo)

Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Alvin Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Evan Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of getting them to put together a trio that would perform several concerts and recording was one of the most exciting moments of my career. Our three languages found a common ground of expression where different musical backgrounds came together and created a unique blend for that period of time. (Andrea Centazzo)
Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert Rome, Italy December 13, 1977
Engineer: Nicola Bernardini
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

On this album, Smegma was: WhateverWoman (Amy, Amazon Bambi), Chucko-Fats (D.K.), The Quackback Kid (Dennis Duck), Ju Suk Reet Meate with Reed Burns, Richard Wagner, and Danton Dodge. At the end of October 1973, Ricky Reets Hubba-Hubba Band was disbanded. It had been decided that what was needed was "a band without musicians" and many wild experimental jam sessions took place. Finally on November 23, a particularly inspired jam was named "Cat Cheese" and the band Smegma was born. Although they had only been playing music together (or at all) for a few months, they decided to record a full length "live in the studio" Christmas album that included three original songs and an Elvis Presley cover. Budding sound engineer Mike Lastra offered them their first studio recording session in a garage in San Diego, and after a few rehearsals every track was recorded in one take and history was made. They wanted to do some old fashioned songs so they asked two willing "musicians," Reed Burns and Richard Wagner, to help, and since only four Smegma members could make the session "Danny" Danton Dodge (14 years old) was recruited as well. Of course, at the time only two or three copies on cassette were ever dubbed. The "Ace Of Space" received one and promptly became the first person to join the group, but now 50 years later this album is finally made available to public for the first time!

"This revelatory album positions John Tchicai’s large ensemble, Cadentia Nova Danica (CND), in the broad context of international new music activity. All previous releases by the group presented them as a free jazz unit. There were only three—their self-titled release on Polydor (1968); “Afrodisiaca” (MPS, 1969); and “Live at Jazzhus Montmartre” (Storyville), recorded in 1967 but not released until 2016. They are all on jazz labels, so the bias is perhaps understandable.

    CND was a great free jazz group, to be sure. But the band and its leader were willing to experiment with a wide range of musical developments outside of jazz and incorporate them into their music. This LP encompasses a collaboration with classical composer Svend Erik Werner, an experiment with taped sound collage, and a remarkable sui generis composition by Tchicai. With the addition of this album to CND’s discography, a broader and deeper portrait of the band’s courageous spirit begins to emerge.

    Tchicai formed the group just after returning to his native Denmark in 1966 after four highly productive years in New York. Upon his return to Copenhagen he immediately sought out musicians with whom he could form a band. He was soon working with an ensemble that included trumpeter Hugh Steinmetz and altoist Karsten Vogel. By late 1966 they became Cadentia Nova Danica (New Danish Cadence). They made their Danish debut at Café Montmartre and quickly developed a reputation as one of the most creative bands in Europe. They remained together until 1971, when Tchicai entered the ashram of Swami Narayanananda for an extended period of meditation during which he didn’t publicly perform.

    Tchicai was absorbing new ideas from all directions. Even in New York, he drew inspiration from other art forms. Ayler’s “New York Eye and Ear Control”, in which he took part, was improvised to a film by Michael Snow. Some concerts had a theatrical aspect with Tchicai appearing in face paint or costume. He also composed and performed “Scandinavian Discoveries”, an extended composition for jazz quartet and string quartet that used both standard and graphic notation. The return to Europe gave him access to influences from classical and non-Western musics that would have been unavailable to him in the US. In Denmark, Tchicai crossed paths with other musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and artists willing to exchange ideas and work together. As a result, performances by CND began to reflect influences from other media and other cultures. Tchicai for example absorbed African influences directly from the African musicians living in Europe and made them a permanent part of CND.

    To a greater extent than in the U.S., classical composers and improvising musicians in Europe took an interest in each other’s work, and CND sometimes collaborated with classical composers who were looking for experimental settings to explore. One situation found them performing in a subway station where the chimes that signaled the train doors were closing were used as cues to play a line of the composition. They once performed on a spinning carousel at a fairground, where the music was captured getting louder and softer as the musicians passed by fixed mics. There was also a noteworthy collaboration with the improvising composers of Musica Electronica Viva.

 The cryptically, if absurdly, titled “Mc Gub Gub, (I–VIII)” is a stunning example of the creative ways Tchicai used ostinatos to structure his compositions and provide a supporting trellis for improvisation. Recorded during a Danish Avantgarde Jazz concert that also included the Contemporary Jazz Quintet, the piece opens with the band loosely repeating a phrase. There’s a constant interchange between composition and improvisation. The written passages also function as transitions between improvised sections, in one case setting up a piano solo whose fluidity contrasts starkly with the angular writing. Many of the transitions are abrupt jump cuts. But in one case the written phrase gradually dissolves as more and more players abandon it to begin improvising. Tchicai and his ensemble explore many relationships between written and improvised on a piece that’s both urgent and playful.

    Danish composer Svend Erik Werner, the producer of CND broadcasts during the band’s extended residency at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation in 1969 and 1970, was among those who took an interest in writing for the group. “Ode to St. John” is contemporary in form and outlook but based on methods taken from Gregorian music. It also makes room for improvisation from members of Cadentia Nova Danica. Although vividly contrasting, the two modes of musicmaking speak to one another. The alto saxophone and trumpet duet has a songlike, vocal quality in keeping with the spirit, if not the form, of Gregorian music. It’s a rewarding meeting—and sometimes clash—between ancient and modern.

    “Pladepip,” Tchicai’s foray into musique concréte, another modern classical genre, is unlike anything else in Tchicai’s recorded canon. Two full-band improvisations bookend a remarkable audio tape created by Tchicai. At the time, he was a collector of 78s and he took several of them and gouged their surfaces so they would skip and create repeated phrases, much like the ostinatos in his improvising and composing. He then assembled the patterns into a sound collage. The tape is jittery and discontinuous, all hard angles and abrupt phrases. The group improvisations, on the other hand, are soft-edged clouds of sound that develop with a slow pulsing flow. The extreme contrast between sections creates the piece’s surreal drama.

    The wide-open borders between musics, the band’s palpable joy in exploration, and their bon homie make this an important addition to Cadentia Nova Danica’s recorded legacy. "

1st edition of 500 - no repress. Deluxe edition with two booklets. Originally released in 1974. Holidays Records: "Blending Native American references into a body of sonority that draws on free improvisation, experimental electronic music, and spiritual jazz, Pygmy Unit’s “Signals From Earth” - originally self-released by the band in 1974 - forges a singular and almost entirely unknown path, and stands almost entirely on its own in the history of west coast American jazz. First appearing on the San Francisco scene sometime during the early 1970s, almost nothing is know about the Pygmy Unit, a seven piece band steered by Darrel De Vore, who contributed flute, bass, percussion, piano, and vocals to the band's lone LP, first appeared with percussionist Terry Wilson within the psychedelic folk rock band, The Charlatans, who belonged to the legendary Family Dog scene. Jim Pepper, a Native American tenor saxophonist known for being a member of the Mal Waldron Quartet, played with Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, and numerous others, and produced the cult favourite, “Pepper's Pow Wow”, for Embryo Records in 1971. John Celona, who contributes parts on sax, synthesizer, and percussion, would later go on to be regarded as an electronic composer of some note. Of the remaining members, saxophonist Frank Albright, bassoonist Ron Grunn, and percussionist Marvin Kirkland, very little else is known. It seems this LP is more or less all they recorded. While undeniably jazz - riding a remarkable line between avant-garde electronic music, spiritual jazz, and free improvisation - the band was very much a product of the diverse creative ferment that developed in their hometown of San Francisco during the 1960s. Embodying the raw spirit of DIY (many of the instruments used in the recordings were made by DeVore himself, self-described as an “itinerant flute-maker”) the ensemble channels references - via passages of chanting and percussion, as well as conceptual underpinnings - from Jim Pepper’s Native American roots, intuiting them with the soulfulness of spiritual jazz, wild moments of avant-gardism centred around synths and electronic effects, and explosions of wild free improvisation. “Development of new music is a continuous path that grows directionally according to psychoacoustical phenomena available for unification. This record is evidence of that development, containing 12 performance pieces, at 12 separate times in different acoustical spaces with various combinations of musicians and instrumentation. The music is shaped by signals, received and sent by life forms on this planet. It is unwritten, unrehearsed, utilizing new and traditional approaches to energy, motion, and form. Eventually, music develops as a natural extension of the environment in which it exists. It is the aim of the traditions… to signal the universe from the Earth.”